JESSICA ANDERSEN
AT CLOSE RANGE

TORONTO • NEW YORK • LONDON

AMSTERDAM • PARIS • SYDNEY • HAMBURG

STOCKHOLM • ATHENS • TOKYO • MILAN • MADRID

PRAGUE • WARSAW • BUDAPEST • AUCKLAND

Contents

Cast of Characters

Prologue

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Coming Next Month

CAST OF CHARACTERS

Cassie Dumont—The Bear Claw Crime Lab’s prickly evidence specialist must defend her territory from a FBI interloper while she struggles to identify a killer. When the murderer targets Cassie, will her greatest nemesis prove to be her strongest ally?

Seth Varitek—Hampered by memories of his wife’s death and his blazing attraction for Cassie, the federal evidence analyst must use all his skills to identify the murderer before it’s too late.

Fitzroy O’Malley—The former Bear Claw evidence specialist retired without warning, claiming he wanted more time for fishing.

Alissa Wyatt—The crime scene analyst is one of Cassie’s closest friends, but her support may not be enough this time.

Maya Cooper—The third member of the crime lab hasn’t been acting like herself lately.

Bradford Croft—The kidnapper was killed months ago, yet the cases seem to be connected. Was the murderer his partner, or is there something else going on?

Nevada Barnes—Is his connection to the first crime scene enough to make him a suspect?

Denver Lyttle—Dishonorably discharged from the military, this explosives expert could be responsible for the bombs used during the kidnapping case and the current murders.

Chief Parry—Bear Claw’s chief of police fears that friction between his officers and the women of the new crime lab will distract the task force.

Prologue

The hunter stalked his prey in the darkest part of the night, while the city of Bear Claw slept unsuspecting.

He cruised the streets and was soothed by the hiss of tires on salty wet pavement. He passed the shopping areas, the ski runs and the museum district. He saw that the Natural History Museum was festooned with banners announcing the upcoming grand opening of the new Anasazi exhibit, which would feature artifacts from the pueblo-dwelling Native Americans who had lived in the area long ago.

Then he turned toward one of the residential suburbs and passed a convenience store, and a darkened gas station that claimed to be open 24/7.

Moments later, trusting that the wet road had no memory of his tracks, the hunter pulled up in front of the modest split-level rental where his prey had gone to ground.

She didn’t know it yet, but she was waiting for him. Had been since he’d first noticed her on the slopes, slim and sleek, handling her board like a pro, then pausing to shake out her long blond mane of hair. She was in her late teens, early twenties—young enough to have Daddy foot the bills, old enough that she slept in a basement room with a separate door to the outside, so she could come and go as she pleased.

So he could come and go as he pleased.

It had been three months since he last hunted, since his idiot partner had gotten too caught up in playing games with the police, too caught up in his own press. With Bradford Croft dead at the hands of the cops, the hunter had bided his time, suppressed his urges. But the changing of the seasons had heated his blood. As the predators in Bear Claw Canyon began to emerge into the spring thaw, he had emerged from his other life to hunt.

He left the engine running and the doors unlocked, fearing no thief in this suburban neighborhood. The walkway to the basement door was shoveled and salted, and wet enough that he would leave no footprint—which was important, because Croft had fallen to a footprint. The hunter wouldn’t be so sloppy. He was mindful of the evidence left by his passing.

The doorknob turned easily beneath his fingertips, further evidence that she had been waiting for him. He opened the door and stepped into the carpeted room, which was steamy with too much heat. He caught a whiff of warm, female musk and his flesh hardened in response.

He craved the sexual thrill of the hunt.

There was no light from outside, and no light inside the room save for a crack of yellow brightness spilling from beneath an adjoining door. His dark vision was better than most, allowing him to detect the girl’s body beneath the rumpled covers of a twin-sized cot.

He strode toward the bed, blood riding high with anticipation.

Without warning, the sliver of light snapped off and he heard motion behind the now-darkened door. He froze. Sexual excitement chilled to betrayal. The smell of female musk took on a heavier, ruttish undertone and anticipation curdled in his gut, souring to anger.

The bitch had brought someone home.

He heard the door open, heard the jingle of an unbuckled belt, the stealthy scuff of footsteps on carpet while the girl in the bed breathed deeply, unaware.

The hunter considered staying still and silent while her “date” snuck out. Indeed, the voice in his head whispered, Stick to the plan. Make no mistakes.

But his car was outside, running. It would be a mistake to let the lover see it. So the hunter followed the sounds of stealthy escape and let his dark-adapted eyes measure the new prey. Just under six feet, the shadow moved with a young, male swagger and the cocky arrogance he associated with professional ski bums—not the true racers, but the instructors and support staff who tried to be more than they were.

The hunter weighed his options while he slipped out of the house and eased closer to his prey on silent, rubber-soled shoes.

The ski bum weaved slightly on his feet, drunk on alcohol or sex or both, and paused beside the running car. “What the—”

The hunter closed in quickly. He struck the younger man at the base of the neck—a hard, numbing blow. Instead of falling, his prey yelled and spun, then staggered to the side and went down on one knee when the pain caught up with his booze-soaked neurons.

The hunter dropped him with a short jab to the throat, then cursed, disappointed when the thrill drained too quickly.

Women were so much more fun.

Well, no matter. He’d take care of the ski bum and hunt again soon. Grinning at the thought, he manhandled his still-breathing prey into the backseat of the car.

“Don’t worry,” he told the unconscious young man, “we’ll find something interesting for you. Just because you’re practice doesn’t mean you’ll get shorted. Nothing says we can’t adjust the plan.”

The hunter chuckled to himself as he drove out of the quiet suburb and turned away from the city, toward the cold, lonely state parks and the empty spaces beyond. It was time to get back to work, time to let the changing seasons dictate the new phase of the plan. Soon, the Bear Claw cops would know they hadn’t seen the last of the predator that had stalked them in the dead of winter.

No. The hunt was just beginning.

Chapter One

When the phone rang, FBI evidence specialist Seth Varitek was sitting in his personal vehicle—a jade-green pickup truck with flare sides and a top-notch sports package—trying to figure out what the hell he was doing parked on the side of the highway.

This was his first weekend off in nearly a month. He should be at home, working on his long-delayed plans to turn the studio into a gym, or kicking back with a beer and a game or something. Instead, he’d found himself in the truck, headed south toward the ski areas with no intention of skiing.

He flipped open the ringing phone. “Varitek here.”

“I’ve got a problem.”

Seth instantly recognized the caller’s gruff voice. Chief Parry ran the police department in Bear Claw Creek, a smallish city south of Denver, Colorado. The middle-aged man was as sturdy as a bulldog and twice as tenacious, and Seth had learned to respect him during the Canyon kidnapping case earlier in the year.

“What kind of a problem, Chief?” Even as he asked the question, Seth glanced overhead and appreciated the irony that he was parked beneath the “Welcome to Bear Claw” sign.

Damned if he knew what had drawn him back to the city two months after the kidnappings had been solved.

No, that wasn’t true. He knew exactly what had drawn him, or more precisely who. A quick image of a long-legged blonde snapped into his head. She was all sharp angles and prickly attitude, which was just as well. He wasn’t in the market for…well, for anything that was leggy, blond and irritating, that was for sure.

Which still didn’t explain what he was doing in her hometown.

“I’ve got a murder,” the chief answered. “I want your opinion on it before I reactivate the task force.”

The words wiped all other thoughts out of Seth’s brain and brought him upright in his seat.

When three teenage girls had been kidnapped earlier in the year, Chief Parry had set up a task force made up of his best officers, ranging from old-school homicide detectives to the three female techno-jockeys of the new Bear Claw Creek Forensics Department—BCCFD. Three weeks into the investigation, they’d asked the FBI for help and had gotten Seth’s coworker out of the Denver office, Lionel Trouper.

When a series of attacks made it clear that the perp had targeted one of the forensic investigators—reconstruction and scene expert Alissa Wyatt—Trouper had called Seth to be a second set of eyes on the gathering forensic evidence.

The Bear Claw Crime Lab’s in-house evidence specialist, Cassie Dumont, had taken it badly, but despite the friction—or maybe because of it—the task force had managed to find the girls, identify the kidnapper and close the case.

Or so they had thought.

Sharp interest quivered through Seth’s body. “You think it’s connected? How? Bradford Croft is dead.”

“True,” the chief answered, “but remember how he talked about ‘the plan,’ and how he didn’t fit all of the evidence? We’ve kept an eye out, just in case there was a partner.” Parry’s voice dropped. “I’m afraid this might be proof positive. When can you get here? I’ve already cleared it with Trouper.”

Seth glanced at the sign overhead. “As chance would have it, I’m about five minutes from the station house. I was…” He shook his head. “Never mind. I’ll see you soon.”

WHEN SHE REACHED her crime scene, Cassie Dumont paused on the sidewalk and scanned the area, trying to get a feel for the neighborhood and the people.

The actual scene was inside a dingy apartment building, one of many built in the late seventies to handle the influx when the skiers discovered Bear Claw. The rear parking lot was peppered with older trucks and SUV’s, most boasting four-wheel drive, a requirement for spring in Colorado. Closer to the back entrance, a pair of BCCPD vehicles and a couple of uniformed officers blocked the growing crowd.

Knowing the crowd would only get worse, Cassie pushed her way through and nodded at the uniforms. “Dumont. Crime scene.”

The grim-faced men let her through, but they didn’t say anything, didn’t give her an update on the situation or a “hey, how’s it going?”

Their silence didn’t bother her. She told herself she was used to it as she entered the dingy building.

The Bear Claw P.D. had mourned the abrupt retirement of their former evidence wizard, Fitzroy O’Malley, and they’d made life hell for the three women hired to replace him—scene specialist Alissa Wyatt, psych specialist Maya Cooper and Cassie, who worked the lab and the evidence.

Over the six months the women had been in Bear Claw, the other cops had softened toward Alissa, partly because she’d made nice, and partly because she’d hooked up with Tucker McDermott, a renegade homicide detective who seemed to have gotten partway domesticated in the past few months. But if the Bear Claw cops liked Alissa and tolerated quiet, reserved Maya because she did her work and didn’t cause a stir, they had no such feelings of amnesty for Cassie.

They plain didn’t like her. Maybe it was because she wasn’t the sort to play nice, or because she’d shredded all of Fitz’s evidence report forms—which had to be twenty years old if they were a day—and computerized the filing system. Maybe it was because she bawled out anyone who messed with her evidence, from senior detectives down to the greenest rookie. Maybe the other cops feared change. Maybe they just hated her guts. Hell, who knew?

“Who cares?” she said aloud, and the words echoed in the dreary hallway. The walls were faintly gray, as though the white paint had given up all hope of brightness, and the carpet smelled musty with years of melted snow, rock salt and other things she probably didn’t want to think about. The elevator was posted with an “Out of Order” sign that was furred with dust.

“Nice place,” she murmured. “Wonder if they’ve got vacancies.”

Well, odds were they would have one soon. The chief’s message had said it was a single corpse, male, presumed murdered.

The word brought a shiver to the back of Cassie’s neck as she climbed the stairs to the third floor. Her imagination played tricks on her, creating the ghosts of other footfalls as though her normal partners flanked her. But Alissa was away with Tucker on very unofficial business rumored to involve a topless beach and mai tais, and Maya Cooper was off at a conference, leaving Cassie to man the crime lab alone.

That was okay. Being alone was far better than being with the wrong partner, which is what she would have gotten if she’d asked the chief for help.

Hell, look what she’d gotten during the Canyon kidnapping case, when she’d been forced to accept “help” she hadn’t needed or wanted.

A faint wash of anger swept away the hallway ghosts as Cassie paused at a doorway marked with police tape. She was faintly surprised that the chief hadn’t left someone at the door. Technically, he should have. But maybe it was a sign that the other cops were finally believing it when she said, “stay the hell out of my crime scene unless you have a damn good reason to be there,” or “touch that and I’ll break your fingers.”

Alissa and Maya were always telling her to be nicer to their new coworkers, but Cassie didn’t see the point. Who cared whether the other cops liked her or not? She wasn’t in the job to make friends.

She was in it to do the job.

Thinking it was time to do just that, she paused for a moment to cover her shoes in a pair of oh-so-sexy paper booties she pulled from her evidence kit. She drew on powder-free gloves, snapped the lid on her kit—an orange plastic toolbox containing the basics of her trade—and breathed deeply, steeling herself for the first sight of death.

She hadn’t been raised around police work. Hell, she’d started life as a chemist, and found her way into forensics after some emotional bumps and bruises. She loved the challenges of her job, the opportunity to fight for justice.

But God, she hated dead bodies.

She was always struck by the fundamental wrongness of a corpse, by the way her mind tried to animate the features, tried to imagine the person still breathing and moving around. No matter how many crime scenes she worked, that first moment of shock was always the same.

But the weakness was her secret. Nobody knew about it, not even Alissa and Maya.

She took another breath, told herself not to be a weenie, and then twisted the knob, opened the door and stepped inside, all in one smooth motion that didn’t allow her any time to cut and run. Surprise stopped her just inside the door.

There was a man in the room, and he wasn’t dead.

An impossibly large figure crouched beside a sofa bed. His wide shoulders and thick muscular legs were outlined in the dim light that filtered through a set of cheap curtains.

Between one heartbeat and the next, training kicked in. Cassie drew the weapon tucked at the small of her back and leveled it at the intruder. “Freeze! Police!”

The moment hung in the balance of friend or foe, safe or unsafe. Adrenaline was a quick shot of fight or flight, along with the knowledge that even at five-foot-ten and a hundred-thirty pounds, she was puny in comparison to this guy.

Then he turned his face into a strip of filtered light and her stomach dropped to her toes.

She jammed her weapon back in its holster. “Damn it, Varitek! What are you doing in my crime scene?”

The light from the window shadowed the FBI evidence specialist’s rough-hewn features, turning his aquiline nose into a study of light and dark against the flat blades of his cheeks and the strong line of his jaw. His hair was black and buzzed, doing nothing to soften the rough edges. His eyes—pale green at the center and darker at the edges, surrounded by long, black lashes—softened the sum total of his features, but did nothing to blunt the annoyance on his face.

“Still territorial as a pit bull, I see, Officer Dumont.” His voice was as dark as his looks, deep, rough and no-nonsense. He glanced up at her. “Your chief called and I happened to be in the area. You got a problem with that?”

Cassie nearly bared her teeth. Hell, yes, she had a problem. The BCCPD had its own forensics department now—there was no reason for the chief to call federal help before she was even on scene.

Not unless he thought she couldn’t handle things on her own. The frustration rose to clog her throat. She’d been trying to fit in, trying to make a place for herself in the Bear Claw force by proving that she was good enough and smart enough to be one of them.

So far she hadn’t made much progress, as shown by Exhibit A, who rocked back on his heels, waiting for her response.

She set her teeth. “No. I don’t have a problem with you.”

Varitek raised one dark eyebrow, but let the lie pass. He inclined his head toward the back wall of the single-room apartment. “What do you think?”

Until that moment, she had managed not to look at the body, had managed to block the smell of blood from her nostrils and the aura of death from her consciousness. But now she swallowed and focused on the corpse.

The young man was posed naked on a pullout sofa bed, propped up against the cushioned backrest with his legs spread-eagled beneath a white bedsheet. His arms were stretched out and his head was tipped back as though he were napping, but his chest didn’t rise and fall. He was utterly still, his skin cast with a waxy, bluish sheen.

The faint burn of ligature marks at the base of his throat spoke of murder, the pose suggested a ritual. A symbol. But of what?

She glanced over at the FBI specialist. “Why did the chief call you in?” Why didn’t he wait for me to run the scene?

Varitek rose to his feet in one powerful movement, more graceful than his bulk suggested. He topped her by a good six inches and seventy pounds or so, and she was acutely conscious of the solidity and warmth that radiated from his body. He wasn’t traditionally handsome—his features were too strong for that—but when they had worked the Canyon kidnappings, attraction had flared between them, unwanted and unacknowledged.

The physical awareness hadn’t faded with time apart, Cassie realized with sudden electric shock. If anything, it had gotten worse.

Unsettled, she nearly stepped back, but that would be retreating, so she held her ground and looked up at him, waiting for an answer.

He gestured to the body. “Look at his hands.”

The young man’s right hand was intact, draped halfway off the sofa bed backrest. But his left hand—

“Oh, hell,” Cassie breathed on a wash of shock. “The tip of his index finger is missing.” She glanced at Varitek. “The chief thinks it’s linked to the skeleton we found in the state park, doesn’t he?”

During the Canyon kidnappings, the perp had booby-trapped a side crevice of Bear Claw Canyon and set bait for the cops. The explosion and collapse had almost killed Alissa. She had lived, but the rescuers had uncovered an older grave when they dug her out.

The skeleton had been recovered intact save for two missing bones—the skull and the first bone of one index finger were unavailable. The skull had been destroyed when the kidnapper bombed the forensics department, wiping out their new equipment and most of their bona fides within the P.D., and the finger bone had never been recovered. They assumed it had disappeared from the grave, lost to scavengers or spring runoff.

What if it had been taken instead?

Varitek said, “It’s a possibility, especially given the suspicions that Croft might not have worked alone.” He glanced at the body, then back to her. “Has your department made any progress on identifying the remains from the canyon?”

Cassie stiffened. “We’re working on it.”

Truthfully, they’d been swamped by other cases. With Bradford Croft dead and the kidnapped girls home safe, identifying the skeleton had dropped on the priority list.

Without the skull, all they had to go on was the approximate age, sex and height of the skeleton—late teens, female, around five-six—and the fact that the bones had been in the ground for a decade, give or take. Feeling a sense of empathy for the girl, Cassie had run the database searches and had come up with a handful of missing-person reports in and around Bear Claw during that time period. None of them had panned out, meaning that the next step was to expand the search statewide. That’d give her a couple of hundred names, most of which—if not all—would be dead ends.

With her current caseload, Alissa’s vacation and Maya’s conference, Cassie hadn’t found the time.

No, she corrected herself with brutal honesty. She hadn’t made the time. So she squared her shoulders and said, “I ruled out some local missing person reports, but haven’t taken it any further than that. My bad.”

But Varitek didn’t respond to the apology. His attention was fixed on the severed index finger. Cassie saw that a thin trail of blood had leaked onto the upholstery beneath, but the larger wound area was sealed over.

“Looks like it was cauterized premortem,” Varitek said, so quietly he was nearly speaking to himself. “Souvenir, maybe?”

Disgust and a low-level horror twisted in her gut. Every now and then during the course of her work it hit her. This was real. It wasn’t a movie set or a scene playing out on TV. The body belonged to a real person. Someone’s son. Maybe someone’s lover.

Cassie swallowed a quick bubble of nausea, while a fragment of a half remembered conversation surfaced in her brain. Face it, you’re not tough enough to hack it in the field, Lee Adams had said. You’re a chemist, not a cop.

Lee had been five years older than she, an instructor at the master’s level forensics program she’d attended outside of Chicago. He’d been handsome and a little bit mysterious, and for a while, she’d bought into everything he said. Years later, some of his comments still snuck up on her when she least expected it.

Like now.

She set her teeth, swallowed the weakness and forced herself to think about the corpse at its most basic—as a piece of evidence in a case they’d thought was closed. “If this body is connected to the skeleton in the canyon, then Alissa was right. She did hear someone else when Croft was holding her captive. There was another man.”

“Maybe, maybe not.” Varitek stepped back so they were shoulder-to-shoulder, staring down at the body. “Don’t jump to conclusions.”

She felt the warmth of him and wished she didn’t notice such things. He was attractive, yes, but he already had three strikes against him in her book. He was in law enforcement. He was controlling. And he was impossible to get along with. The first was a fact. The other points she’d discovered months earlier, when she’d been forced to let him into the kidnapping case and he’d taken over, brought in his own people and shoved her to the edges of the investigation, claiming she’d be safer there.

Well forget him. She wasn’t looking to stay safe at the expense of the job.

She scowled. “I’m not jumping to conclusions, I’m using my version of the razor theorem—the simplest explanation is usually the correct one. We’ve got a body tied to a crime scene from the kidnappings. The kidnapper is dead, so we know he didn’t kill this guy. Other lines of evidence have already suggested Croft had an accomplice. Ergo, we’re looking at a partner.”

“We’re not looking at anything but the evidence,” Varitek said bluntly. He turned away and reached for his bigger, meaner-looking crime-scene kit, which Cassie knew from experience contained everything hers did, and then some. He said, “Let’s get to work. The sooner we release the body to the ME, the better. We’re going to need a cause of death, time of death, ID…anything we can get. The chief said that based on our findings, he’ll decide whether to recall the task force.”

And that quickly, that easily, he took over her crime scene.

Again.

Cassie fisted her hands at her sides, so tightly that her blunt nails dug into her palms. She thought about going for her weapon. Instead, she said, “Agent Varitek?”

He didn’t even turn around when he answered, “Technically, it’s Special Agent.”

“Yeah, you’re special all right,” she muttered loud enough that he could damn well hear. Then she raised her voice, but fought to keep it level. Businesslike. “Until the task force has been officially reopened and your assistance has been requested by the proper channels, I consider this my crime scene. I’d like you out of it.”

“We don’t always get what we want,” he said, and his voice held a thread of something she couldn’t quite interpret. He glanced back at her, pale green eyes unreadable. “Your boss called my boss—that’s proper channels. You don’t like me being here? Take it up with the chief. If you’re not going to do that, then suit up. We’ve got a scene to work.”

FOUR HOURS LATER, with the body long gone and the empty, dismal-feeling room nearly processed, Seth straightened to his full height and stretched, groaning when his joints popped in protest. His knees still ached from time to time, a legacy of his younger days when he’d gone from catcher’s mitt to goalie’s mask and back again, depending on the season. Not quite good enough to go pro as either, he’d slid sideways into law and then law enforcement, gotten married and then—

Irritated, he slammed the lid on that train of thought. Ancient history had no place on the job. But still, the dark memories soured his already bleak mood as he turned to make the last few notations and pack up his kit.

He was aware of Cassie watching him, aware of the tension humming between them, a mix of professional antagonism and something more complicated. She’d made it obvious that she didn’t like him from the first moment they’d met. She wanted the crime scene to herself and resented his every breath. It annoyed her that he had better equipment, better contacts.

Normally, he wouldn’t have wasted five minutes on a local cop who didn’t want his help, but something about her drew him. Intrigued him. She was an evidence specialist who had to force herself to touch a corpse, a prickly woman with shadows of sadness in her eyes.

And those legs. He couldn’t help noticing her legs. She wore tan pants cut more for field work than fashion, but they did little to disguise the long length of her calves, the sassy curve of her rear and the aggressive swagger of her hips as she moved around the room, shoulders stiff with resentment.

But even as those legs strutted through his mind, he focused on the rest of her, on the prickles, the defensiveness and the bloody-minded territoriality. All things he had no patience with, especially when they interfered with his ability to do his job.

“You ready to go?” Cassie asked. She stood near the door holding her evidence kit, which held their photographs, notes and measurements, as well as a rough sketch of the scene.

He nodded. “Sure. Let’s get out of here.” He hefted his own kit, which contained fiber evidence, prints and other trace samples. Ninety-some percent of the evidence—maybe even all of it—would prove useless, either unrelated to the case or too generic to be of any help.

But it was those last few percentages, those moments of discovery, that made it all worthwhile.

He just hoped to God he’d have an “aha” moment this time. He and Cassie hadn’t talked about it—hell, they hadn’t talked about anything—but the knowledge hung in the tense air between them.

This was no act of passion or rage, no accidental death or manslaughter. It was premeditated. Posed. Practiced.

If they didn’t find this guy quickly, it was a sure bet he’d strike again.

As they left the dismal room and sealed it behind them, Seth couldn’t shake the feeling that he was missing something. He didn’t even try, because it was like that at every crime scene. That was part of what kept him sharp.

Cassie jerked her head toward the stairs. “I’ll meet you back at the station. When I called, the chief said the task force would meet in a half hour.”

Seth told himself not to watch her walk away, not to admire how her long legs ate up the hallway with an aggressive swing that was all Cassie—in a hurry and full of attitude. When she’d disappeared into the stairwell, he cast a final look back toward the sealed door, aware of something tickling the back of his brain. A connection maybe, or a suspicion.

He concentrated for a moment, but it didn’t gel, so he turned for the stairs knowing the detail would surface eventually. When he reached the ground floor he saw the door swing shut, evidence of Cassie’s passing. Figuring she’d left her truck in one of the visitors’ slots in the back lot, he shoved open the rear exit.

And heard Cassie’s voice shout, “Halt! Police!”

A weapon fired.

Then there was silence.

Chapter Two

Gun clutched in her hand, Cassie sprinted in pursuit of a dark figure nearly half a block ahead of her. She’d been stupid to shout, stupid to identify herself. Procedure be damned, she should’ve shot the guy the moment she saw him crouched near the back tire of her truck.

But she’d been caught up in thoughts of Varitek, thoughts of cop-shop politics. So she’d shouted and her shot had gone wide.

And now she was chasing some guy down the damn street.

Could her day get any worse?

Her lungs burned and her thighs howled, but she pushed faster. Ahead, a jean-clad figure wearing a dark ski jacket slipped on a patch of slush and went down. He scrambled up with the flexibility of a young man and skidded around a corner into a narrow street between two more crummy apartment buildings.

Cassie rounded the corner and accelerated, thinking she had the guy trapped in the alley, thinking she had—

A hot, wiry body slammed into her side, driving the breath from her lungs, sending her to the wet, cracked pavement. She screeched, tucked and rolled until she hit a steel trash bin. Then she lunged to her feet and faced her attacker.

His face was obscured by a brightly colored hat and muff combo, but she could see his eyes, which were hard, hazel chips gleaming with deadly sanity. He licked his lips. “You’re a blonde. My favorite.”

“Get your hands up,” she ordered. “Hands up and face the wall!”

She was too slow, or he was too fast—in the moment it took her to level her weapon, he lunged and swung something glittering and metallic at her head. She ducked and the blow glanced off her shoulder. Her arm went instantly numb. She fell to the side and her gun clattered to the pavement.

The gun, she had to get the gun! She saw it under the trash bin and lunged for it just as her attacker swung again. She dodged to the side, felt road muck soak through her pants and kicked out at his ankle.

Too little, too late. He scooped up the gun, stood, turned to her—

And his eyes went beyond her, to the alleyway opening. He saluted her with her own gun, and said, “I’ll be seeing you soon, beautiful.” And he turned and ran.

“Cassie!” Varitek pounded up to her, grabbed her arms and dragged her to her feet. “Are you hurt?”

“Let go of me!” She tried to shake him off but he wouldn’t shake, so she kicked at him. “He’s getting away!”

But Varitek was as immovable as granite. He held onto her with one hand and waved as two panting uniformed officers ran past. “He went out the back. About five-ten, male, jeans and a dark jacket. Red hat.”

As the officers bolted past, Cassie recognized the men who’d been watching the rear exit when she’d entered the crime-scene building. But where the hell had they been when red hat was messing with her truck?

When Varitek’s grip on her arm slackened, she yanked away. Then she got in his face and poked him in the chest. “Why didn’t you chase him? I was fine!”

At the moment her brain reported the feel of his rock-hard chest beneath her fingertip, he seemed to grow bigger, looming over her, dark brows furrowed, light green eyes nearly shooting sparks. “You were not fine! The bastard knocked you down and roughed you up. And where the hell’s your gun?” When she didn’t answer, he cursed. “He got it. Great. Nothing like paperwork to round out the night, never mind the idea of arming another criminal.”

She refused to back away, refused to back down even when the angry heat radiating from his body snuck through the chilled layers of shock and set up a vibration in her core. She held onto her anger when a sneaky little voice tried to tell her that he was right, maybe she should’ve waited for backup.

“What’s your problem?” she snapped. “I’m a cop just like you. Hell, I’ve probably got more street time logged in the past few years and I can bloody well handle myself. Don’t you get it? I’m not your problem!”

In a flash, he grabbed her by the front of her jacket and lifted her clean off her feet to press her against the rough wall of a nearby apartment building. Her heart jammed into her throat at the physical shock of his strength and his nearness.

She started to struggle, to curse him, to knee him where it hurt if that was what it took, but the look in his eyes stopped her. There was no rage, no irritation, not even a hint of the heat she’d seen moments before.

There was nothing. Complete, utter blankness.

“Have you ever seen a dead woman in an alley covered with her own blood?” he asked, and his voice sounded as though it was being ripped out of him. “Have you ever gotten there just in time to hear her last words, her last breath?” There was something in his eyes, something bleak that tore at Cassie even as fear quivered in her chest. She started to answer, but he cut her off with a shake. “I have,” he choked out. “I know how it feels, damn it! I…”

He broke off and abruptly released his hold on her jacket, dropping her to the ground. He stood there, looking down at her for a moment, and the pain was gone from his eyes, leaving only a cool, pale green stare.

“Varitek?” she said, her brain grappling with what had just happened. When he didn’t respond, she drew breath to demand an explanation, a response, anything, but before she could speak, a siren’s whoop drew their attention and a BCCPD four-wheel drive vehicle nosed into the narrow street.

Chief Parry emerged. “You two okay?” he asked, eyes cutting between them with piercing intensity.

“We’re good,” Varitek answered in his trademark deep voice, showing no evidence of what had just happened between them. “Did you get the guy?”

“No,” Parry replied, disgust written plain on his weathered features. “Damn it all. He dumped the hat and the jacket and blended.”

“I’ll want the clothing,” Varitek said, not even bothering to glance at Cassie. “It’ll give us DNA at the very least. You never know. Punk like that might pop up in one of the databanks.”

Feeling excluded and angry, Cassie stepped forward. “What did he do to my truck?”

The men stared at her, reminding her that she’d been the only one to see the dark figure crouched down by her tire. She quickly sketched in the events leading up to the chase.

The more she talked, the harder Varitek scowled. He shot a glance at the chief, who nodded and said, “I’ll get the bomb squad boys on it.”

A quick shiver of fear reminded Cassie that they had never actually connected Bradford Croft to the bombings during the kidnapping case. Though he’d checked into a few Web reference sites on explosives, he had no formal training, and their bomb expert, Sawyer, had deemed two of the devices fairly sophisticated.

“You two coming?” the chief called, indicating his vehicle.

Varitek nodded for Cassie to precede him, but once ahead, she turned to face him, stalling them out of Parry’s earshot. “What the hell happened back there?”

He didn’t pretend to misunderstand, just growled, “Nothing you need to know about. It won’t happen again.” Then he brushed past her, climbed into the SUV and yanked the door shut with a final slam that sounded gunshot-loud.

Conversation closed.

CASSIE’S QUESTION reverberated in Seth’s head an hour later as Chief Parry stood at the front of a BCCPD conference room and walked through a summary of the Canyon kidnappings.

What the hell had happened back there?

A flashback, maybe, or a memory. He didn’t know. Whatever it was, he’d suddenly been back in a different, darker alley while a brown-haired woman bled out in his arms. Her eyes had focused on his face just before she died.

The thought of it, the guilt and the rage of it, closed a fist around his heart.

“The evidence showed that Bradford Croft killed his mother,” Chief Parry said, drawing Seth’s attention out of the past, to the current case, which refused to behave cleanly. The chief said, “And he admitted his guilt of the kidnappings to Officer Wyatt. However, he died of his injuries before we were able to clear up a number of discrepancies, including his original alibis, which collapsed under scrutiny, and whether the skeleton found at the scene of the first explosion was tied to the case.”

“Which makes all this pretty darned speculative,” Tracy Mendoza interrupted, then tacked on a belated, “Sir.” When the chief nodded for her to continue, the homicide detective said, “The missing finger seems to connect the older skeleton with today’s murder, but our only evidence tying the skeleton to the kidnappings is location. It could be a coincidence.”

The chief nodded. “That’s possible, but we’re not ruling out anything until the evidence tells us to. Until that time, we’ll remain open to the possibility that the older skeleton is connected to today’s body and both are related to the Canyon kidnappings.” Parry’s eyes hardened to flint. “There’s a murderer on the loose in Bear Claw. Let’s get him.”

He got nods and murmurs of agreement until Mendoza’s partner, an older, harder detective named Piedmont, said, “It would’ve helped if the crime lab had reconstructed the old skull.” He curled his lip at Cassie, who was sitting alone at the far edge of the room, over near the wall. “Too bad they lost it.”

Cassie shot to her feet and snarled at Piedmont. “We didn’t lose the skull. The kidnapper blew it up along with my lab. And let’s not forget that it was your sloppy security that let the guy into the police department in the first place.”

The Bear Claw cops grumbled, but she had a point. The forensics lab was located in the basement of the P.D. Nobody should have been able to walk in past the front desk and make it to the stairs without authorization.

Nobody but a cop, Seth had thought at the time, but none of the other evidence backed up that possibility.

At least none that they’d found.

Chief Parry stepped in before the grumbles could degenerate. He raised his hands. “Okay, here’s how it’s going to work. I’m breaking the task force up into three teams. Team one is going to investigate the canyon skeleton. Use the ME’s notes and whatever forensics can tell you and go from there. Team two is going to work the new murder. Team three, composed of the forensics department and Special Agent Varitek, will act in a support capacity for the other teams.”

The chief read off the names on teams one and two, but before he could dismiss the task force, Seth stood, knowing there was one thing left to say, knowing it wouldn’t make him popular. “Chief? May I have a moment?”

Parry acknowledged him. “Of course.”

Seth cleared his throat. “We need to consider one more aspect of this—the safety of our officers, particularly the women.” Saying it aloud brought the dark memories closer. “I’m not trying to be sexist here—” well, maybe he was, but he had a damn good reason for it “—but don’t forget what happened during the kidnappings. Croft focused his attentions on Alissa Wyatt and nearly killed her. If this is connected, then the pattern could repeat.”

Cassie frowned and spoke up. “If it’s connected, then he’s already broken pattern. All the other victims, including the skeleton, were women under twenty. The murder victim was a man in his mid-twenties.”

Seth countered, “The bomb squad didn’t find any charges under your truck, but the brake lines were severed and reconnected with a thermolabile polymer.” Anger flared in his chest at the thought, and at the fact that she didn’t seem nearly worried enough. The lines would’ve given out with heat and use—like once she was on the highway, or maybe one of the mountain roads. “Face it. You’re already a target.”

She lifted her chin and stared him down. “Don’t try to protect me. I can take care of myself.”

The words echoed through memory to another woman, another time. Seth growled, stepped around the podium and—

“Thank you, Special Agent Varitek.” The chief got between them and diverted Seth to his chair with a warning look. “Based on that evidence, I think we need to assume that the female officers are at higher risk, and Officer Dumont in particular.” He scanned the room and made two partner changes, breaking up a pair of male detectives and a pair of female detectives and switching them. “That leaves everyone protected except Officer Dumont.” The chief looked at Seth. “You’ll keep an eye on her?”

“Yeah,” Seth said, though he wished there was another option. “I’ll watch her back.”

At that, Cassie shot to her feet and stalked from the room, shoulders tight, body language just this side of aggressive.

The door slammed behind her.

CASSIE POUNDED DOWN to the basement crime lab, nearly vibrating with fury.

Maybe she should be used to being underestimated by now, but it still stung. How long would she have to fight the fragile female stereotype? How many heads did she have to bite off, how many testosterone-laden men was she going to have to chase away from her territory before they’d believe that she was smart enough, tough enough and street-savvy enough to do the job she’d been hired to do?

In all honesty, Varitek probably wasn’t trying to be a jerk. There was some logic to his words. It had been a tense, ugly situation when Croft had targeted Alissa. But she wasn’t Alissa, and this wasn’t the same situation. Cassie couldn’t afford to be coddled, and she’d be damned if he shoved her to the side of another investigation.

She glared around the lab, part of her wishing for someone to fight with, part of her glad to be alone in the one space that made her feel truly welcome. The banks of machines didn’t care what she looked like or whether she peed sitting down. They answered the questions she asked, using the information she gave them. She could load in two DNA samples and be confident that the next morning, the fluorescent peaks and valleys on the computer printout would tell her whether she had a match or not. Whether she had a mixed sample or not.

The evidence didn’t care who she was.

She let her fingertips drift over the stereomicroscope she used to examine fiber, hair and dirt samples. She glanced at the logged evidence from the apartment murder scene, the jacket and hat from the bastard who’d rigged her truck. But though she was tempted to dive in, she knew better.

She was too ticked off to work effectively, too distracted. Her thoughts were jammed with Seth Varitek. She was all tangled up with the sound of his deep, masculine voice, and the feel of being pressed up against the wall of a crummy apartment building. He’d invaded her senses until she swore she could taste him on her lips, which was impossible.

Cursing, she strode out of the lab and into her small office, where she threw herself into her desk chair and slapped her computer mouse to wake the machine from its screen saver.

Then she stared blankly at the glowing icons.

“Stop taking this so personally,” she said aloud, hoping the words would help put the scene upstairs into perspective. “He wasn’t saying you couldn’t take care of yourself. He was just saying to watch out.”

Only he’d said more than that. He’d agreed to “watch her back,” which she translated as “keep her in the lab while I work the field.” He was an excellent evidence tech, but so was she. And she was the one who’d be staying in Bear Claw once this was over. She was the one who lost status in her coworkers’ eyes every time she let the FBI take over a crime scene.

She lost. Not him.

So, yeah, it was personal. Maybe not to him, but it sure as hell was to her. With Alissa and Maya out of town, it was up to her to defend the value of the new forensics department. It was up to her to make herself indispensable to the BCCPD, so the other cops would finally realize that she was worth something to the department.

That she was worth something at all.

Lee’s voice whispered around the edges of her mind, telling her it wasn’t enough, that it would never be enough. Gritting her teeth against a press of anger, she clicked over to her favorite Web search engine. She typed two words into the query box.

Seth Varitek.

If this was going to be a battle for control of the Bear Claw Forensics Department, it made sense for her to know her enemy, to know his weak spots, if there were any. And though public records might not give her the insight she needed, the Web was a good place to start. She didn’t need to be a full detective to know that.

She avoided his public profile on the FBI field office Web site. She’d checked it out a few weeks after he’d left Bear Claw, just out of curiosity, and had been unsettled by the hot rush that had punched through her when she’d seen his official photo. In the picture, his dark hair was buzzed close to his skull and his pale green eyes seemed to stare directly at her. It was by no means a glamor shot, it was too rugged for that, too fierce. But it had encapsulated what she remembered of the man, and it had left her far warmer than she’d liked.

“So we’ll skip that site,” she muttered to herself. “We’ll stipulate that he’s relatively hot and move on to the important stuff—figuring out what makes him tick.”

She kept one eye on the door as she clicked through lists of the papers he’d authored in recent years. He’d come looking for her sooner or later—to gloat if nothing else—and it wouldn’t do for him to find her prying. Wouldn’t do for him to know that she was interested, if only in the context of defending her territory.

The search results were sorted by date, so it took her ten minutes or so to work through the past couple of years’ worth of information on Varitek, mostly notations of meetings he’d attended or spoken at, research he’d done on computer simulation models and methods for integrating the various criminology databases.

“No wonder he has all those cutting-edge programs to work with,” she said, impressed in spite of herself. “He developed some of them.”

That also explained why he was a generalized evidence guru when so many of the FBI forensics experts specialized in one field, whether it be hair or paint chips or DNA. But that didn’t really help her. She needed something more. Something personal. Then she clicked on the next screen worth of information and hit pay dirt.

Only it wasn’t the sort of dirt she’d wanted to find.

It was far worse.

The newspaper articles were from the major Denver papers. The headlines jumped out at her, highlighted one-line summaries that told a terrible story.

She sucked in a breath and moved to blank the screen, but a hint of movement and a low curse from the doorway warned that she was already too late. She spun in her chair and saw that Varitek stood in the doorway of her small office, close enough to read the damning words over her shoulder.

His eyes were dark, his expression closed. “Find what you needed, Officer?”

Her stomach knotted and she stood, unwilling to let him loom over her. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have pried.”

He didn’t nod, didn’t smile, didn’t let her off the hook. Instead, he said, “No, you shouldn’t have. It’s none of your business.” He didn’t move, didn’t even seem to be breathing, though she knew that was an illusion. “How much did you read?”

“Not much,” she answered quickly. “Just the headlines.”

Headlines like Woman Murdered Returning Home From Art Show, and Cop Husband Vows Revenge Against Diablo Brothers.

“Then what else do you want to know?” he said, voice dark with an emotion that didn’t show in his face. “Should I tell you that Robyn and I fought about that damned art show? She wanted people to know how run-down the schools were in that section of town, wanted to help improve them. She moved her paintings down there and planned a party, a grand opening for God’s sake.” Grief deepened the lines beside his mouth and the muscles at his jaw bunched with tension. “I made her promise not to go out there without me. Then I let her down because I got a call. A break in the case.” He paused. “It was a plant, of course. A diversion. I got back just in time to find her. In time to say good-bye.”

Cassie made a wordless sound of sympathy while her heart tore in her chest and leaked pain. She reached out, but didn’t quite touch him. “I’m sorry.”

The words seemed inadequate. She reached over and blanked the computer screen, as though erasing the headlines could erase the memories.

“If I’d been there to drive her home…” His expression was closed, as though he were talking to himself now, as though this were a conversation he’d been through a thousand times in his head. “If I’d been better about separating my life from my work…” He trailed off and refocused on her. He scowled, but the expression didn’t seem as fierce as it had before. “Sorry. Not your problem.”

But it was her problem, she realized. It explained what had happened back in the alley, and why he had moments of being as overprotective as one of her four older brothers. Why he kept trying to push her to the edges of her own investigations.

It was her problem, because it was affecting her ability to do her job and make her place in Bear Claw.

Knowing it, but also knowing that she’d never been good at touchy-feely emotional conversations, she jammed her hands into her pockets. “I’m sorry, Varitek. There’s nothing I can say to make it better. Nothing at all. But I won’t let you shut me out of this case like you did with the kidnappings, just because I’m a woman and you’re afraid I might get hurt.”

He scowled down at her. “I didn’t shut you out.”

He was closer than she’d realized, a mere half step away. She wanted to retreat from the warmth of him, the sheer size of him, but held firm. “Yes, you did. Maybe you didn’t mean to, and maybe the lab fire made it simpler to use FBI equipment and personnel. But in the end, it was your work, not mine, and everyone here knew it.”

“I didn’t—”

She held up a hand to stop him. “Don’t worry. We’re both at fault because I let you take over. But not this time. This time you’re on my turf and I’m not giving it up.” She took a breath. “Look, I’ll admit it. With Alissa and Maya away, I could use help. But this is going to have to be my investigation and my evidence collection. I’m in charge this time.”

She expected an explosion, but instead he closed the scant distance between them, until that damn warmth kindled in her midsection and she saw the heat reflected in his eyes. “What do I get if I agree?”

Her first thought was so thoroughly sexual that she stumbled back on a wash of heat and surprise before catching herself and standing fast. Since when did her mind dwell in the gutter?

Sure she’d been on a dating hiatus for the past few months while getting settled in Bear Claw, and before that she’d stuck to casual things that rarely developed past pleasant kisses. She liked sex well enough, but she’d been…busy. Why had her body picked now to wake up?

She gritted her teeth, forced the heat aside and said, “What do you want?”

He stared down at her for a moment, and she didn’t dare interpret his expression, which was part closed off, part something else. Then he said, “The guy in the alley said he’d see you again. If he wasn’t focused on you before, he is now.”

The chilly logic chased away some of the heat. Cassie crossed her arms and swallowed a bubble of worry. “That’s good. It’ll give us something to work with. Maybe he’ll be stupid and make a mistake.”

“And maybe he won’t,” Varitek countered, voice dead level. “Bradford Croft wasn’t as smart as his crimes. That, plus the murder scene today, tells me we’re dealing with the slicker of the partners. We can’t count on him making a mistake.”

Cassie forced herself to meet Varitek’s eyes. “Which means?”

“That you’re in danger,” he answered flatly. “So here’s the deal. I’ll let you run the case and make you look good in front of the locals, but I’m in charge of security. In the lab, in the field, wherever. No debates, no questions asked. What I say goes.”

She bristled. “You’re not letting me do anything, and I don’t need you to make me look good.”

“Take it or leave it.” He shrugged. “I’m not here for a turf war. I’m here to help you people find a murderer before he strikes again.” His eyes sharpened on hers. “And he will strike again. Soon.”

She couldn’t argue against that. The pose and the missing fingertip argued for ritual. The lack of good evidence argued for the perfection of long practice.

Yes, the killer’s appetite would be whetted now. It was only a matter of time.

But it galled her to give Varitek control. She didn’t need anyone to protect her. She could take care of herself. Hadn’t she proved that when she moved away from her father and her four too-protective older brothers?

That thought brought an insidiously undermining voice that said, Yes, and you hooked up with a man just like them, only much, much worse.

“Do we have a deal?” Varitek asked, snapping her away from the memory of being weak.

She stiffened her spine because she wasn’t weak anymore, damn it. But she also wasn’t stupid or suicidal. Varitek had a point, whether she liked it or not. The guy in the red hat had rigged her brakes, and he’d promised to see her again.

So finally, though she wished there was another option, she nodded. “Deal.”

They didn’t shake on the agreement. She told herself it was because they didn’t need to, that their words were good enough. But deep down inside, she knew why she didn’t offer to shake his hand.

She didn’t want to know what it would feel like to touch him. Rather, she wanted it too much, and physical attraction had been her downfall once before.

She wouldn’t let that happen again.

Chapter Three

The next morning dawned a balmy forty degrees, which was both good and bad news for Cassie and Seth, who had decided to reexcavate the canyon gravesite in search of additional clues. It was good news because the ground would soften up quickly. Bad news because it meant they would be working in mud.

Knowing it, Seth skipped his usual slacks and button-down shirt and went with jeans and a sweatshirt. He kept a packed overnight bag in his truck, which saved him from having to hit the local mall. He armed himself with the backup weapons he kept in the truck’s locked console, and pulled out of the hotel parking lot feeling more centered than he had the previous day.

He’d considered spending the night on Cassie’s couch, but she’d nixed the plan in no uncertain terms and he hadn’t pushed because he’d needed the time away from her, needed to decompress.

He’d worked hard to deal with the memories and the guilt, yet a few old headlines on a Web search engine had slammed him right back to that place, breaching his defenses and sweeping him into the memories before he’d been prepared.

Seth braked the truck beneath a red light, and scrubbed a hand across his face, though that did nothing to erase the image of a delicate, dark-skinned woman with a riot of curls and laughing brown eyes. Robyn. Sweet, big-hearted, impulsive Robyn. They had met in college and immediately embarked upon a tumultuous relationship. The sex had been fantastic, their friendship less so, but that hadn’t seemed to matter. They broke up, got back together, broke up again and got back together again just after Seth entered the FBI.

That time it had stuck. They had married a year later, and if marriage hadn’t ended their problems, it had given them a moral and legal imperative to stick it out. Seth didn’t believe in divorce. Hell, his parents had been together going on forty years. They’d taught their children—Seth and his older sister, CeeCee—that marriage was a forever thing. Choose it once and don’t falter.

Well, Seth had tried not to falter, but he had in the end.

An annoyed horn blast warned him that the light had gone green, and Seth hit the gas, angry at himself for going down that mental path when he had more relevant things to worry about.

Like catching a killer while protecting an evidence tech who didn’t want to be protected.

He’d asked the chief to send patrols past Cassie’s house at intervals throughout the night. They hadn’t reported anything suspicious—Seth had checked—but he didn’t relax until he arrived at the neat, two-family house she’d sublet.

She answered the door at his knock, wearing jeans and a sweatshirt akin to his, along with a battered-looking parka and lace-up boots with a sturdy tread. Her glossy blond hair was pulled back in a severe ponytail that accented the graceful sweep of her neck. His eyes locked onto the soft spot behind her ear, and the ragged frustrations of a long, sleepless night redirected themselves into an unfamiliar sizzle.

An unexpected want.

She glanced over at him and her brows drew together. “You ready?”

That was the question, Seth realized. He was ready for the case, but not for her. He wasn’t ready for the way his blood kicked when he saw her, the way he seemed to have already memorized her features, and the way he noticed how she always took a deep breath before turning on the attitude, as though it wasn’t entirely natural for her.

That was why he’d driven to Bear Claw in the first place, he finally acknowledged. To test himself. To tempt himself.

When he and Cassie has worked together earlier in the year, sparks had flown as they’d clashed over everything from fingerprinting techniques to lunch orders. At first that had been a relief, because he’d promised himself that when it was time to date casually again, he’d choose women he got along with rather than the ones who stirred him up. But once he’d returned to Denver, he’d found himself thinking about her, wondering how she was doing and who she was doing it with.

Bad sign.

“Yeah, I’m ready. Let’s go.” He stepped back from the door and gestured to his truck.

The sooner they got digging, the sooner he could get back to Denver with his question answered. Maybe he was ready to emerge from the isolation of the past four years and date again. But there was no way he was ready—or willing—to date Cassie Dumont. He wanted a calm, mature friendship with a woman, something based in common ground this time, rather than attraction and excitement.

The decision should have made him feel better as they walked to his truck in silence, then drove out to the state forest.

So why was he more frustrated than ever?

He didn’t have an answer for that as he turned his truck into the Bear Claw Canyon State Park, bypassed the parking area and followed a narrow track into the park, almost to the edge of Bear Claw Canyon.

When they’d both climbed out of the truck and shouldered their equipment, Cassie glanced sideways at him. “You okay?”

“I have a bad feeling about this case,” he said, not really answering the question.

She bristled. “If you’d bothered to let me help before, you’d know that I’m damn good at my—”

“I’m not talking about your work!” he snapped. “I’m talking about your truck brakes and the guy in the red hat, about the fact that you’re in—” He cut himself off, snapping his jaw shut on the words because he already knew they wouldn’t do any good. Cassie was on a mission to prove herself to the other cops, and there was no way in hell she was letting him win this argument.

Just like Robyn and her damned art show.

Cassie stepped closer, so close he could smell the faintest hint of woman over the earthy scent of the spring thaw. That fragrance tangled itself in his soul, where Robyn and Cassie had somehow gotten mixed up together. She said, “Look, Varitek. My mother died when I was a little girl, but I’ve never lost someone close to me as an adult. I won’t pretend to know how it feels. I can’t. But stop trying to put your past on me. I’m a cop. Either you find a way to treat me like one or this isn’t going to work.”

“That’s—” ridiculous, he started to say, but couldn’t because they both knew she had a point. He wasn’t treating her like a cop. Hell, he wasn’t even treating her like the female agents and officers he dealt with on a daily basis. He was treating her like…what? A girlfriend? A lover?

She was neither.

So he inclined his head and stepped back, letting himself be the one to back down this time. “Fine. You’re a cop. Let’s dig.”

THEY WORKED IN PARALLEL, setting up portable heaters to melt through what was left of the slushy spring freeze, and clearing away the mud layers they’d backfilled after the original excavation of the grave. There was no conversation, no banter between coworkers.

At first, Cassie was grateful for the silence, which gave her time to settle down. After a while, she even admitted—to herself at least—that Varitek wasn’t the only one at fault. No matter what he said or did, her first response was to attack. Maya had commented on it during the earlier case, but Cassie had brushed it off as Maya being Maya. The psych specialist didn’t know when to turn it off and stop analyzing people.

But now, soothed by the rhythm of digging, Cassie forced herself to take a good hard look at her behavior over the past day. Heck, the past six months, ever since the three women had moved to Bear Claw and set up the new department.

The best defense is a good offense, her father always said. A man’s man, Cody Dumont had been far more comfortable with aphorisms and sports metaphors than one-on-one conversations. But was he right?

Even Alissa had suggested she tone down the attitude, and that wasn’t Alissa’s style. As Cassie dug down to the farthest reaches of the original excavation and resieved the muddy slime for a bone or bullet fragment they might have missed, she wondered whether her friends had a point.

It wasn’t Varitek’s fault she didn’t fit in. It was hers. Maybe Lee had been right, after all. Maybe she couldn’t cut it.

At the thought, she heard the clatter of something distinctly unmudlike in her sieve. “Hey! I’ve got something!”

Varitek was at her side in an instant. “Bone?”

“No. Metal. Jewelry, maybe?” Professional excitement buzzed through her as she worked the object free of the clingy, frozen earth, careful to set aside the surrounding material for further analysis. “A ring, I think.”

Sure enough, once she rinsed it in the bucket of water she’d set aside for the purpose, she caught the glint of yellow gold and the flash of a fat red stone.

Varitek squinted at it. “A class ring, I think. Should be traceable.” He grinned at her and nodded. “Good work.”

The two words shouldn’t have warmed her so thoroughly. She told herself it was professional pleasure that he’d credited her with the discovery, cop-to-cop.

She almost believed it.

She photographed, bagged and tagged the evidence, then stowed it in her kit to take back to the lab.

They wouldn’t expect to get any trace evidence off it—previous testing of the strata and bones had indicated that the skeleton had been in the ground for ten to fifteen years—but if they were lucky, it would help them identify the remains.

And from there, maybe the killer.

“Want to keep going?” Varitek asked.

She rocked back on her heels and surveyed the scene. “Well, we’ve gone down to the original excavation and past it by about six inches. We’re in undisturbed ground for the most part, so we probably won’t find anything else. That being the case, let’s go down another two inches just to be sure.”

He nodded. “Works for me.” He glanced at the sky, which was clear and bright with spring. “The weather’s on our side, and putting a name to this skeleton would be a huge break.” He dug in. “Besides, the next task force meeting isn’t until this evening.”

The chief had timed their meetings for the overlap when the day shift went off and the night shift was just coming on. It sounded good in theory, but in practice the task force cops worked pretty much round the clock and reported in when they had something.

Knowing it, Cassie kept one ear out for the ring of her cell as she and Varitek skimmed off another layer of wet grit.

The first call was from the ME, Boniface, who reported that the young man had died of strangulation, as the ligature marks had suggested, and that the finger wound had likely been caused by a smooth bladed knife. He couldn’t explain the cautery of the wound, but theorized that the knife could have been heated.

Cassie made a mental note to check the wound scrapings for carbonization that might support the hypothesis.

Other reports filtered in as the afternoon grew long and the grave widened. Mendoza and Piedmont reported that the apartment where the body was dumped had been rented six months earlier in the name of Randy Meyers, but things got complicated after that. Meyers, a midlevel extreme skier, had been tracked down in Tahoe. He claimed to have handed the apartment over to a female friend when he’d grown bored of the Bear Claw slopes. She, in turn, had sublet to some guy, first name Nevada, last name unknown.

They would identify the body eventually, but it would take time.

After that report, there was a lull in the phone traffic and the silence hung heavy. Finally, almost unwillingly, Varitek said, “You mentioned that your mother died when you were young. That must have been tough.”

Cassie wasn’t sure which surprised her most, that he’d made a personal comment, or that he remembered her passing mention. Then again, they were up to their elbows in a grave. Death seemed like a reasonable topic.

“My father raised me from five on,” she answered, “and my four older brothers pitched in. They nearly smothered me with their good intentions, but I love them dearly.” She paused, then added, “From a distance.”

Varitek smiled slightly. The expression softened his face just enough to take it from fierce to unexpectedly sexy. “I have an older sister,” he said. “CeeCee was overprotective as hell when we were kids. I can’t begin to imagine what four brothers must’ve been like.”

“A little like you times four,” she said without thinking, disarmed by the fact that they were actually having a pleasant conversation, “only they don’t have the tall, dark and handsome thing going for them.”

Then she froze. Oh, God. Please tell me I didn’t just say that aloud.

But his sudden, complete stillness told her that she had, indeed.

She climbed to her feet, stripped off her gloves and faced him. Blood tingled in her cheeks. “Sorry. That was uncalled for, especially after I lectured you about treating me like a cop. Let’s forget I said that. Let’s forget I even thought it.”

But when Varitek stood and faced her, his expression was intent and wholly focused on her. “You want to know why I reached the crime scene before you yesterday? Because I was already in town. I’d driven down here for no real reason except to drop in on you and see…” He twisted his lips with more self-deprecation than humor. “Hell, I don’t know why. Because I couldn’t get you out of my head, I suppose.”

Blood skimmed through her body, just below her skin, warming her, worrying her. She blew out a breath and said, “Look, Varitek—”

“You should probably call me Seth at this point, don’t you think?”

“Look,” she said, and skipped the name entirely, “this is a really, really bad idea. We can barely hold a civil conversation, and I’m not in the market for a…whatever.” She’d been uncomfortable talking about her emotions ever since her relationship with Lee, who had been a master of taking those emotions and turning them back on her until she wasn’t sure where her opinion left off and his began. Besides, she wasn’t about to name the things that flitted through her mind, like…lover. Boyfriend. Husband. Soul mate.

“I’m not in the market for a whatever, either.” A dark, introspective smile touched his lips. “I think maybe that’s why I came down. So I could remind myself that we’d be wrong together.”

“We’d be terrible,” she said, as much to herself as to him. “I’m cranky and territorial. You’re controlling and overprotective. Hell, we don’t even work well together.” Although they had excavated the grave shoulder-to-shoulder and it hadn’t been as awful as she’d feared. Indeed, it had been almost…solid. Good. She felt the hard bump of the class ring folded in its plastic envelope and knew they’d made progress.

But she’d let physical attraction override common sense once before and it had been a disaster. Hell, it’d nearly ruined her career. No way she was letting that happen again.

She was older and smarter now.

Wasn’t she?

HOURS LATER, after they’d attended the task force meeting and logged in the evidence from the old grave site, Cassie finally signed out and headed home. With her truck impounded as evidence—wasn’t that ironic?—she had no wheels, so she didn’t even bother with a token protest when Varitek offered to drive her home.

She bristled when he walked her to the door.

Key in hand, she faced him on the front porch. “I’m not asking you in.”

The corners of his mouth twitched. “I didn’t expect you to. I’ll stay out here while you check the house.”

“Go.” She waved him off with a shooing motion, too tired to deal with him. “I’ll be fine.” When he didn’t budge, she said, “Come on, give me a break here. I’m tired, I’m hungry, and I’m armed. Just go. I’ll see you in the morning.”

After a momentary stand off, Varitek scowled. “Fine. See you tomorrow.” He stalked away, leaving her feeling like she’d been childish and surly.

Which she had been.

“Oh, fine,” she muttered under her breath, stabbing her key into the lock. “I’ll apologize to him tomorrow.” She twisted the knob and pushed through the front door as Varitek’s truck pulled away.

Two steps inside her door, someone grabbed her. She screamed and tried to spin, but he yanked her arm up behind her back. The sharp pain of a needle flared in her shoulder, followed by cool, burning numbness.

Then nothing.

SETH MADE IT ALL THE WAY to his hotel before he turned back. He told himself not to bother, that they could talk it out in the morning when one—or both of them—was in a better frame of mind. But something compelled him to spin the truck around and head back to her yellow house on the outskirts of town.

When he got there, he saw that the other half of the side-by-side two-family was lit. A shadow skimmed past a curtained window as he watched. The neighbors were still up. In contrast, all of the lights on Cassie’s side of the house were off—not just the outside light that had been burning when he’d left, but the room lights, as well. It was as though she’d never come home.

She’s asleep, he told himself, though it wasn’t much past eight o’clock. She skipped dinner and headed straight to bed.

Then he saw the barest hint of motion at the corner of the house, near Cassie’s side window. It could’ve been a small animal in search of scraps.

It could’ve been an intruder.

Seth slapped the truck into Park, radioed an alert to the Bear Claw dispatcher, grabbed his flashlight and service revolver and hastened across the muddy lawn. He didn’t even think about chasing the shadow. He needed to get to Cassie first, needed to know she was okay.

And if that meant he was ruled by his past, then so be it.

He crossed the porch in three echoing strides and pounded on the door. “Cassie? Cassie, open up or I’m coming through.”

He paused, counted to five, and when there wasn’t a hint of sound or motion from inside, he stepped back two paces and turned his shoulder toward the door.

But before he could launch himself, the porch light snapped on, the neighboring door opened and a long shotgun barrel poked through. “Hold it right there,” a man’s voice said. “Drop the weapon and don’t move. I’m calling the police.”

Seth froze in his tracks and hissed a curse between his teeth. “I’ve already called them. I’m an FBI agent and I believe Officer Dumont is in trouble.”

“Sorry, but I’m not letting you bust into Cassie’s place without a look at your badge, mister.” The door opened fully, revealing that the shotgun owner was young, probably early twenties and baby-faced with it. But he held his pump action with the ease of familiarity, and an infant’s fretful cry emerged from inside, followed by a woman’s soothing tones.

Seth could have the guy down in two seconds flat, but a new father with a gun? He didn’t want to go there. So he said, “I’m going to go for my ID, real easy, okay? I don’t want any trouble.”

It took him under a minute to pull his ID and convince Cassie’s neighbor he was legit, but those seconds beat beneath Seth’s skin like the echo of a faltering heartbeat.

Finally, the guy lowered his shotgun. “Sorry. I just needed to be sure, what with Cassie being a cop and all.” He rubbed his temples as though he had a headache, but focused his slightly bleary eyes on Seth. “What’s wrong? Has something happened to her? Do you want me to go in with you?”

Untrained backup could be worse than no backup, so Seth shook his head. “No. Get inside with your family and lock up.”

Then Seth took two running steps and slammed into the door. Pain sang through his body, but the heavy wood held. He cursed and tried again, wishing this crap was as easy as it looked on TV.

The door gave on his third try, splintering around a sturdy dead bolt. He kicked it the rest of the way in, convinced now that there was something wrong. There was no way Cassie could have missed hearing that racket.

He took a step inside her place. And smelled gas.

Her half of the house was full of it.

“Out! Get out!” Adrenaline sizzled through Seth’s body. He raced back onto the porch and hammered on the neighbors’ door. “There’s a gas leak! Get your family out and warn the neighbors.”

Then he ran back inside Cassie’s home and swept the main room with his flashlight, barely noting the accents she’d added since his last visit, unexpectedly feminine touches of chintz and softness. “Cassie?”

No answer.

Knowing the gas leak was no accident, he turned for the kitchen, hoping it would be that simple. No such luck. The stove and oven were both electric.

Damn it. The gas was coming from the basement. The bastard must have rigged a furnace line to fill her side but not the adjoining half of the house.

Seth took a guess and yanked open a door off the kitchen, hoping she had basement access. He was rewarded with a flight of stairs stretching downward beyond the flashlight beam. He eased down, moving fast but testing each step for a tripwire or pressure pad.

The smell was less intense in the cellar, suggesting that the gas line had been looped into one of the forced hot air vents.

When Seth reached the bottom, he shined his light over the dusty space, picking out a neat stack of cardboard boxes, a discarded bicycle, a hot water heater, and finally the furnace.

He froze and cursed at the sight of a wire-laden device duct taped to the tank. As he watched, the red numbers of the digital display ticked from twenty-one to twenty.

Then nineteen.

He spun and ran for the stairs. No time. There was no time to disarm the device, even if he had the knowledge. Once that thing blew, the spark would follow the gas trail up into the house. He had to get Cassie out of there, fast.

Seventeen. Sixteen.

He pounded up the stairs to the kitchen while the numbers counted down in his head. His flashlight beam carved through the darkness ahead of him as he bolted up to the second floor and shined the light into a short hallway, a bathroom, a bedroom.

No Cassie.

Fifteen. Fourteen. Thirteen.

Damn it. Where was she?

He reversed direction and charged down the stairs, heart pounding in time with the seconds left on the digital timer.

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